Orkut's founder is collecting signatures to bring back the network Google shut down in 2014: whether anything is actually being built, he won't say

Orkut started in 2004 as a side project of Orkut Büyükkökten while he was working at Google. The network became huge in India and Brazil, was then overtaken by Facebook, and Google shut it down in September 2014. Now the 51-year-old founder has used a post on X to call on people to go to Orkut.com, add their name in support of a comeback and invite others too.

The message is clear: algorithms and machine-generated content have eaten social media. "AI is an extraordinary technology, but it dissolves the one premise that made social networking special and worth building: that there is a human on the other side," Büyükkökten wrote in a letter published on the site. And he added: "I know how we get there: we rebuild the internet we first fell in love with. The one with authentic people, real connection and genuine belonging."

It sounds good, but the history is different. In 2016, two years after Orkut shut down, he launched Hello, a network for connecting people through shared interests. It closed in 2020 with just over 2 million downloads, against the roughly 300 million active users Orkut once had. In 2022 he announced on Orkut.com that he was "building something new", with no details. Two years later he told WIRED he was working on a network that would "use AI and machine learning" to connect people. That network never appeared - and now, in his letter, AI is the main culprit.

So what is actually on offer? For now, a list of names. Büyükkökten does not say whether a new version of Orkut is already in development, or whether it will ever launch, and he did not respond to a request for comment. A sign-up list is the cheapest market research there is: collect enough names, and there will be something to show investors.

Nostalgia for the internet before algorithms is real, and not just in Brazil. But is it enough to pull people away from Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, where their friends, groups and ten years of habits live? That is the question no sign-up list can answer.